Bruce Springsteen bashes President Trump as a "con man" on "That's What Makes Us Great," his new protest song with longtime collaborator Joe Grushecky. "Don't tell me a lie/ And sell it as a fact/ I've been down that road before/ And I ain't going back," Springsteen sings on the track, Pitchfork reports.

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The song premiered Wednesday morning on SiriusXM and Grushecky's website. At one point in the sharply worded tune, Springsteen proclaims, "Don't you brag to me/ That you never read a book/ I never put my faith/ In a con man and his crooks."

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Grushecky said he'd already written the song before initiating the collaboration. "I sent it to him and he liked it," he noted. "I said, 'What do you think about singing on it?' He gave it the Bruce treatment." The singer, who formerly fronted Pittsburgh rock band the Iron City Houserockers, added that Trump "lost [him] the moment he started making fun of special needs people," referring to an infamous speech where the Republican appeared to mimic a disabled reporter. "How could a person like that be president of the United States?"

"Well, you know, the republic is under siege by a moron, basically," he said. "The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy. When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do. Once you let those genies out of the bottle, they don't go back in so easy, if they go back in at all.

"The ideas he's moving to the mainstream are all very dangerous ideas – white nationalism and the alt-right movement. The outrageous things that he's done – not immediately disavowing David Duke? These are things that are obviously beyond the pale for any previous political candidate. It would sink your candidacy immediately."